Andrew Rowe - On the Shoulders of Titans

Shaper Attunement

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Summoner Attunement

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Attunements theory is constantly being updated. This is, at least in part, because attunements themselves are always changing.

I don’t mean that just in terms of an individual person’s attunement growing stronger — although that’s certainly important, and we’ll get to details on that later on.

The first factor of change that I’m mentioning is magical specializations. Different attuned naturally gravitate toward specific types of magic, and as they improve, their attunement subtly changes. The attunement adapts to generate a larger amount of that mana type in the body, which allows the attuned to use it more easily. In extreme cases, this can cause the mark itself to change. In my case, for example, I am highly specialized in fire magic, and my attunement mark reflects this by having a distinct fire modification.

The other change is even more interesting. The goddess — or, perhaps the visages — are constantly updating the design and functions of types of attunements. My own Elementalist mark is subtly different from Patrick’s, because he has a more recent iteration of the mark than my own.

Here’s a standard Elementalist mark, like Patrick’s.

This is what my own mark looks like.

Similarly, my father’s mark is different from either of ours, because he has an earlier mark. His looks like this.

Now, a portion of these changes are due to the attunement levels being different, but some changes are a legacy of the age in which the attunements were given.

Note the central line; in my father’s generation, this was longer, and had a tail. That is absent in both Patrick’s variant and my own.

Similarly, the line that crosses through the center is somewhat different in all three versions.

We refer to these different versions of each attunement as “attunement generations”. Since we began recording these changes about one hundred and seventy years ago, there have been fifteen different revisions to each attunement that have resulted in clear visible changes. The core symbol for each attunement has remained similar, but the outlying marks have changed substantially over time. Thus, we can assume that a new attunement generation occurs roughly once every ten years, give or take a few.

There is also a strong possibility that there have been other, subtler changes that have not resulted in a visual difference in each attunement.

You’re probably wondering why attunements are being changed. The answer is simple — the goddess is clearly still improving them. While the goddess is a being of tremendous power and knowledge that vastly outstrips our own, she is not all-knowing, and she is still capable of learning and improving.

What are some of these improvements, you might ask?

Well, for one thing, our modern attunements are demonstrably better at converting mana between different types than older generations. A hundred years ago, converting enough mana for a spell took several minutes, and then the attunement “held” that converted mana in the desired state until it was used. This meant you essentially had to ration out all the types of mana you wanted to use before going into a dangerous situation, rather than being able to convert mana freely like you can now.

Another major improvement? Shrouds.

Attunements have always caused some degree of mana to leak out, creating an aura…but that aura didn’t always have any sort of useful function.

The very first recorded improvement to attunements — and the one that got us to start recording changes — was the implementation of the “defensive shroud” function, which manipulates the excess essence around an attuned into the type of barrier we use it for today. Prior to that, all that additional mana was simply wasted.

Earlier versions of the defensive shroud had differences, too. Initially, only Citrine and higher level attuned had access to that shroud. It’s theorized that this is because earlier shroud-generation functions were less efficient, and required more of a shroud to have any use. It’s also possible that earlier versions required a larger amount of mana to be drawn from the attunement to make them function.

You might be surprised by that last part, but yes, your attunement’s basic functions do use up a bit of your mana at all times. When we measure your safe mana usage, that’s already taken into account. The shroud is one of these autonomous functions, but there are other basic ones as well.

The attunement is constantly monitoring the amount of mana in each part of your body, and that function requires some mana. The function that converts some of your mana also requires mana. Even the attunement functions that help regulate the flow of mana in your body require a little bit of your mana in order to work.

For the Enchanters in the class, this might sound like an attunement is much like a magical item. You’re not wrong. In fact, attunements function almost identically to magical items — they’re just a thousand times more complex than a typical item. Your attunement rune replicates the functions of dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of enchantments.

Artificial attunements, then, were created by understanding each of these functions and learning to replicate them. We’re still not perfect at making attunements ourselves — but like the goddess herself, we’re always learning.

House Cadence:

Magnus Cadence– Head of House Cadence, father of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Presumably also the father of Sera Cadence.

Laura Lyran– Head of House Lyran, mother of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Emerald-level attuned with the Swordmaster and Elementalist attunements. Member of Valia’s Council of Lords.